New limits on heavy sterile neutrino mixing in B8 decay obtained with the Borexino detector

G. Bellini, J. Benziger, D. Bick, G. Bonfini, D. Bravo, M. Buizza Avanzini, B. Caccianiga, L. Cadonati, F. Calaprice, P. Cavalcante, A. Chavarria, A. Chepurnov, D. D'Angelo, S. Davini, A. Derbin, I. Drachnev, A. Empl, A. Etenko, K. Fomenko, D. FrancoC. Galbiati, S. Gazzana, C. Ghiano, M. Giammarchi, M. Göger-Neff, A. Goretti, L. Grandi, C. Hagner, E. Hungerford, Aldo Ianni, Andrea Ianni, V. Kobychev, D. Korablev, G. Korga, D. Kryn, M. Laubenstein, T. Lewke, E. Litvinovich, B. Loer, F. Lombardi, P. Lombardi, L. Ludhova, G. Lukyanchenko, I. Machulin, S. Manecki, W. Maneschg, G. Manuzio, Q. Meindl, E. Meroni, L. Miramonti, M. Misiaszek, P. Mosteiro, V. Muratova, L. Oberauer, M. Obolensky, F. Ortica, K. Otis, M. Pallavicini, L. Papp, L. Perasso, S. Perasso, A. Pocar, G. Ranucci, A. Razeto, A. Re, A. Romani, N. Rossi, R. Saldanha, C. Salvo, S. Schönert, H. Simgen, M. Skorokhvatov, O. Smirnov, A. Sotnikov, S. Sukhotin, Y. Suvorov, R. Tartaglia, G. Testera, D. Vignaud, R. B. Vogelaar, F. Von Feilitzsch, J. Winter, M. Wojcik, A. Wright, M. Wurm, J. Xu, O. Zaimidoroga, S. Zavatarelli, G. Zuzel

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Abstract

If heavy neutrinos with mass mνH≥2me are produced in the Sun via the decay B8→Be8+e+H in a side branch of the pp chain, they would undergo the observable decay into an electron, a positron and a light neutrino νH→ν L+e++e-. In the present work Borexino data are used to set a bound on the existence of such decays. We constrain the mixing of a heavy neutrino with mass 1.5 MeV≤mνH≤14 MeV to be |U eH|2≤(10-3-4×10-6), respectively. These are tighter limits on the mixing parameters than obtained in previous experiments at nuclear reactors and accelerators.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number072010
JournalPhysical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
Volume88
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 29 2013

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics
  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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